2. We briefly examine some key trends in the development of the class structure in Greece in the past 20 years, with the central aim to better orientate the work of the Party towards the working class. The analytical study, which will be published in the near future, includes other aspects (e.g. relation between place of work and residence, educational level, age distribution) as well as theoretical and statistical processing, in order to determine more accurately the sections of wage labour belonging to or approaching the working class.

In particular, we examine some main trends in population growth, the economically active population as a percentage of the potentially economically active population, the employment change, basic elements in the sectoral distribution of employment and wage employment, data on the composition of the workforce by sex and age as well as data on employees’  earnings.

For convenience, we quote the definitions of the bourgeois statistics we are using (as cited by the Hellenic Statistical Authority–ELSTAT):

Employed person: A person aged 15 and over who during the reference week performed work —even if just for one hour a week— for pay or profit, or worked in the family business. Alternatively, the person was not at work, but had a job as a salaried employee or as self-employed from which he or she was temporarily absent.

Unemployed person: A person aged between 15 and 74 who was not classified as employed (according to the previous definition), was immediately available to start work and was either actively seeking for employment in the past 4 weeks or had already found a job to start within the next three months.

Economically inactive population: Persons who are not classified as employed or unemployed.

Economically active population (labour force/workforce): The employed and the unemployed persons.

Unemployment rate: The ratio of the unemployed to the total workforce[1].

3. The country's population has not changed significantly in the past 20 years. There was a slight increase during the period of capitalist development in 2000–2008 until the outbreak of the crisis in late 2008 and more clearly in 2009, rising from 10.8 million to 11 million in 2008, dropping again to 10.7 million in 2019.

A similar trend can be observed as regards the population aged 15–74 years, which increased slightly until the crisis and then shrank, dropping by 250,000 people in 2019 in comparison to 2000.

Population trends are similar in both sexes, but not the same. Both the male and female population increased by about 150,000 in the period 2000–2008, but the subsequent decline in the population is different in the two sexes: the female population dropped by 100,000 in the period 2008–2019 and the male population dropped further down by almost 250,000 in the same period.

The trends of population change from one region to another are significantly varied with regards to the whole country: there is a decrease of 6% in Attica, Western Greece and West Macedonia, an increase of about 4% in Crete and the South Aegean and an impressive increase of 11% at the North Aegean. Attica is home to 35% of the total population, followed by Central Macedonia (17%).

Regarding the age of the population, there is a significant increase in the average age in the past 20 years by 4 years, rising from 39.7 to 43.8, with the crisis accelerating an aging trend that pre-existed during the period of capitalist development in 2000–2008. At the same time, the age of the population shows great variations within the country. The aging of the population results from the combination of the chronic low fertility rates, the increase of life expectancy, and the large-scale emigration, mainly to EU countries, of younger and often more specialized workers, during (and after) the crisis of 2008–2015.

4. The economically active population grew during the period 2000–2008 and then shrank (with a slower pace) during the period of the capitalist crisis in 2008–2015, as well as during the period of the weak economic recovery in 2015–2019. As a result, the economically active population in 2009 consisted of 4.7 million people; 2.1 million were women (45%) and 2.6 million were men (55%).

TABLE 1

Change in population and employment fundamentals (in millions) 

                                         Source: Hellenic Statistical Authority (ELSTAT)

During the past 20 years, the economically active population appears to be slightly increased in 2019 compared to 2000. The small increase is attributed to a significant increase in the number of employed women, by 265,000, and a decrease by 147,000 in the number of men. This trend is the outcome of different phenomena acting differently on the two sexes. During this period, there was a significant increase in the integration of women into the labour market. Moreover, the trend of    immigrant workers abandoning Greece owing to the crisis was mainly observed among men. It isnotclearifthereisasex-based differentiation on the number of Greeks emmigrating abroad.

The contribution of people under 30 years old in the economically active population was diminished from 1.2 million in 2000 to 707 thousand in 2019. The contribution of middle-aged people in the economically active population grew during the 2000–2008 period, it remained constant until 2015 and afterwards it decreased slightly. The contribution of older people in the economically active population keeps growing.

TABLE 2

Contribution by sex and age group in the economically active population as a percent of the total population of each sex in the particular age group

                                           Source: ELSTAT, Labour Force Survey (LFS)

The increase in the total population does contribute in the overall increase of the economically active population, albeit this fact is not sufficient to explain other important changes. The crisis of 2008–2015 accelerated the already increasing contribution of people from 35 to 54 years in the economically active population. This is attributed mainly to the increasing integration of women into the labour market and the increased retirement ages. On the other hand, there is a decreasing trend in the participation of younger ages, attributed mainly to the increasing number of years spent in tertiary education, as well as to emigration. Emigration currents were particularly strong during the 2008–2015 period.

As can be seen in Table 2, the increasing contribution of women in the economically active population is evident in the past 20 years (there is an increase of 18.5 percentage points in the ages 35–54 and an increase of 11 percentage points in the >55 age group). Furthermore, there was an increase (of 10 percentage points) in the contribution of men >55, whereas in the age group 15–34 the participation decreased by 5.6 percentage points.

The increase of the economically active population in the past 20 years did not lead to an increase in employment. The outbreak of the crisis brought about a significant drop in employment. During the 2008–2013 period, there was a “sudden” decrease of 1.1 million employed persons. Due to this fact, the number of employed persons in 2013 dropped to 3.51 million. During the 2013–2014 period, the number of employed persons remained constant, while from 2015 onwards there was a gradual increase in employment until the outbreak of the crisis in 2020. The recovery trend in employment is accompanied by changes in the sex and age structure. The relative increase in employment is driven mainly by older people and women. The increase of the average age of employed persons, reflecting an “aging” workforce, is mainly due to the emigration of a younger workforce, the increased duration of studies and the increase in the retirement age. The increased participation of women in the workforce is clearly distinguishable.

5. During the period from 2015 to 2019, there were relatively small changes in the composition of employment, even though the consequences of the new synchronized crisis have not been fully incorporated into the statistics yet. During this period, employed personsincreased by approximately 300 thousand, reaching 3.9 million. This increase was almost entirely driven by an increase in the number of salaried employees, the number of which grew from 2.35 to 2.66 million. The number of self-employed without employees decreased slightly from 856 to 834 thousand. The trend of significant reinforcement of wage labour is clear. Salaried employees account for 68% of employedpersons,compared to 65 % in 2015. The total number of salaried employees has not yet reached the level of 2009, however, it is bouncing back, while the number of self-employed keeps decreasing. At the same time, the crisis and recovery period have lead to a significant increase in the concentration of the working class in larger enterprises, as indicated by the information published by both the ELSTAT and the ERGANI (Information System of the Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs). However, there is still a large number of salaried employees in small and very small enterprises.

TABLE 3

Class structure of employment (inmil.)

                                           Source: ELSTAT, LFS

Thestatistical data are not complete for 2020 and the situation becomes more complicated owing to the measures of the “emergency situation” of the pandemic.

During the 2009–2019 period, which includes both the crisis and the recovery, the main developments in the structure of employment were:

• The reduction in the total number of employed persons by 640 thousand.
• The relatively smaller decrease in the total number of salaried employees. Their number decreased by 290 thousand —with uneven distribution across different sectors— with an increase in their percent contribution in employment and a significant increase in the number of unemployed persons. It should be highlighted that not all salaried employees belong to the working class. This is because, under the umbrella term “salaried employees” there are, among others, sections of the bourgeoisie (senior managers), salaried employees in the armed and security forces, and strata with an intermediate function in the supervision and management of enterprises (in previous Party documents they were called “new middle strata of salaried employees”). On the other hand, salaried employees working as freelance service providers are not included in the total number of salaried employees, as they are considered to be self-employed. However, these methodological challenges do not alter the general trend. The number of self-employed and employers reflects the contradictory trends within capitalism. On one hand, they are getting destroyed owing to the concentration and centralization of capital. On the other hand, there is a relative re-emergence of new self-employed and employers, as an integral part of capitalist recovery, which slows down the tendency of shrinkage of the number of self-employed and employers. During the 2009–2020 period, there was a decrease in the number of self-employed and employers by 130 and 90 thousand respectively, even though the past three years there is a slight increase in the number of self-employed by 15 thousand (which, however, does not concern the urban self-employed, whose number decreased in the corresponding period).

TABLE 4

Distribution of employment per region (2019)

                                          * It refers to self-employed with and without employees. 

                                          Source: Eurostat

The distribution of the workforce varies significantly per region, with the percent of wage employment to be significantly higher in Attica (approaching 80%), whereas in Peloponnese and Western Greece is just slightly over 50%, owing to the large percent of self-employed persons working in agricultural production.

6. A detailed analysis of the sectoral structure of the economy goes certainly beyond the “narrow” scope of analyzing its class structure, which is the aim of this study. However, it is ultimately impossible to fully analyse changes in the social structure if we don’t analyse sides of the economic structure.

Class structure differs between various sectors of the economy, and analyzing the sectoral structure of economy contributes to the analysis of the overall structure. The organic composition of capital differs vastly between sectors and as a result so does the number of workers per sector.  The importance of sectors, from the point of view of their role in constituting social capital, that is their role in reproducing capital, does not only depend on the number of persons employed in different sectors but also on the proportion of capital employed and its strategic importance in production. As Marx demonstrated, capital exploits the collective labourer and surplus value —transferred between sectors— is distributed in proportion to the capital employed.  This is after all the fundamental reason why measuring the degree of exploitation at a mere “sectoral” level is impossible. The highlighting of sectors of the economy which are important in the reproduction of the total social capital is a decisive factor in the deployment of the Party forces, without disregarding the importance of sectors with a high concentration of the working class.

 TABLE 5

Gross value added (GVA) per economic sector as a percentage (%) of the total GVA

The sum of the percentages does not equal 100% as some of the smaller sectors have been omitted. The sectors are presented according to bourgeois statistics. The Real estate sector, which has the highest percentage of GVA, includes imputed income (rent, owner-occupied housing).

                                Source: ELSTAT

Even though the statistics sited in table 5 are problematic (e.g. sectoral classification, wrong calculation of GVA), they illuminate certain trends:

• The sectors that generally do not produce new value have an important contribution to GDP in the national economy, with a percentage of 40%, which in 2017 reached 42%. Furthermore, this shifted toward the sectors of Public Administration (from 8.1% to 10.2%) and Real Estate (from 11% to 17%, one of the highest percentages in the EU), whilst the contribution of Trade (which includes certain activities that do produce value) decreased (from 16.3% to 10.5%).

• The Manufacturing sector is still the one producing the most value, having currently a higher contribution than Trade, without however showing a substantial upward trend as a percentage of GDP. Nonetheless, this stability obscures some great internal restructuring in the sector. Specifically, the subsector of Food and Beverage almost doubled in Gross Value Added and increased its contribution to the overall GVA of manufacturing in 2017 from 22% to 33%. The subsector of Basic Metal Production also substantially increased its contribution to GVA from 14% to 20% of the overall GVA of manufacturing. On the other hand, traditional sectors of domestic manufacturing became obsolete. The Clothing and Footwear industry as well as the Pulp and Paper industry both shrank from 10% each to  2.5–3%. The growth of the Chemical industry was accompanied by a shrinkage of the Plastics industry.

• Furthermore, the GVA data shows the substantial shrinkage of Construction.

• In sectors with a large number of workers there is a shift from Trade to the Hospitality–Tourism sector, which corresponds to an important increase of imported tourism, but also to the growth of the hospitality sector itself.

          The Hospitality–Tourism sector represents a relatively low contribution of 6.5% to GVA, in which, however, unreported income and the so-called “shadow economy” need to be factored.

7. The period 2009–2019, which includes the multi-annual phase of the crisis and the short-term phase of anaemic recovery, records the development of employment in various sectors in differing ways.

TABLE 6

Employment per sector (in thousands)

                           Source: ELSTAT

TABLE 7

Class distribution of employment per sector, 2019 (in thousands)

                           Source: ELSTAT

TABLE 8

Wage employment (in thousands)

                           Source: ELSTAT,  LFS

The changes during the period between 2009–2019 in the largest sectors can be found in:

• The Manufacturing sector, where the employed persons (total)decreased from 520 thousand in 2009 to 377 thousand in 2020. In the same period, wage employment was reduced significantly less, from 404 thousand to 302 thousand persons. The percentage of wage employment in manufacturing is over 80%.

• Employment in the Construction sector, which was reduced considerably from 307 thousand persons in 2009 to 145 thousand persons in 2019, concerning mainly the number of salaried employees, which was reduced from 280 thousand to 89 thousand.

• Employment in the Transportation and Storage sector, which was slightly reduced from 216 thousand to 209 thousand persons, while wage employment was reduced from 155 thousand to 145 thousand persons.

• Employment in the Scientific and Technical activities sector, which was slightly reduced from 240 to 200 thousand persons in 2019, while wage employment in those services appeared to be reduced from 112 to 97 thousand persons. However, we note that a considerable part of salaried employees of this sector is recorded as self-employed (freelance service providers) and this employment relationship was considerably expanded during this period.

• Employment in the Education sector, which remained stable, from 329 to 321 thousand persons, while wage employment in this sector was also slightly reduced, from 298 to 292 thousand persons, although we note the presence of considerable unreported employment of both self-employed and salaried employees.

• Employment in the Healthcare sector, which increased slightly, from 234.4 thousand persons in 2009 to 248.4 thousand persons in 2019. Wage employment was increased to 200 thousand persons.

• Employment in the Hospitality–Tourism sector, which increased from 320 to 380 thousand persons. The increase concerns the salaried employees in the sector, while employment other than those was reduced. The percentage of wage employment in Hospitality–Tourism was increased reaching 71% in 2019 compared to 60% in 2009.

• Employment in the Trade sector, which was reduced from 830 to 700 thousand persons, while wage employment was reduced slightly, by about 15 thousand persons, with the percentage of wage employment increasing and reaching 64%.

It is also noted that the so-called “civil servants” —which include employees in Public Administration, Healthcare, Education, Security Forces, etc.— were 517 thousand in 2019, slightly up compared to 2015 when they were 567 thousand, with a small reduction in number compared to 2013, when they were 603 thousand. The relative stabilization of the number of employees obscures relative changes in their composition. Specifically, employees in education were reduced from 178 thousand in 2013 to 164 thousand in 2019, while employees in the security forces increased from 63 thousand to 68 thousand in the same period.

TABLE 9

Concentration of salaried employees (in thousands)

Calculation of salaried employees utilizing ELSTAT data.

The calculation of the number of salaried employees is approximate and was calculated by subtracting the number of self-employed and employers from that of employed persons (total). The data show a methodological differentiation from the EFKA (Unified Social Security Fund) census data, since EFKA data record monthly employment, while ELSTAT data do so yearly.

                           Source: ELSTAT, LFS

As regards the concentration of salaried employees, the totality of data reflects an increasing trend in larger enterprises, although the number of salaried employees in small enterprises continues to remain high.

TABLE 10

Classification of enterprises according to the number of salaried employees

The EFKA data show employment on a monthly basis and not on a six-month one.

                           Source: EFKA, August 2019

A relative differentiation between the EFKA (Unified Social Security Fund) and ELSTAT data becomes apparent. Specifically, the EFKA data show about 300–400 thousand fewer workers in enterprises with fewer than 10 employees (630 thousand according to EFKA, 1,043 million according to our estimation based on ELSTAT data). We note that the difference of approximately 300 thousand is also shown in the total estimation of the number of salaried employees between EFKA and ELSTAT (2.39 million according to EFKA and 2.66 million according to ELSTAT), a difference concerning almost exclusively small enterprises with fewer than 10 employees. For enterprises with more than 10 employees, EFKA shows 1.77 million employees and our estimation based on ELSTAT data is 1.74 million. We have well-founded reasons to assume that this differentiation relates to the manner of classification of the unemployed. EFKA calculates the unemployed on a monthly basis, while ELSTAT does so on a six-month basis. Finally, the EFKA data depict the situation mainly from the point of view of the capital —how many persons are working in a given month— while the ELSTAT data do so mainly from the point of view of the salaried employees —in which sector the salaried employee has worked for the last six months. Of course, the ELSTAT data obscure the size of unemployment, but for the purpose of estimating the structure of the working class, it is rather more indicative.

In any case, we can estimate that, despite the trend towards the concentration in larger enterprises, there remain a large number of salaried employees in small enterprises. The percentage of salaried employees in enterprises with more than 50 employees increased from 14% in 2009 to 25% in 2019, while the percentage of salaried employees in enterprises with fewer than 10 employees decreased from 50% in 2009 to 37% in 2019. Despite all this, approximately 1 million salaried employees remain in enterprises with fewer than 10 employees.